Getting my knit on

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I really love the swooping ribbing around the ankle, it hugs your ankle so no sloppy bagging ankles! The design came to me one night while I was doodling, and it just basically wrote itself. No caffeine involved! (seriously, not even lying!)

I’ve been keeping a huuuuuuge secret, and I suck at keeping secrets! I have been up all night too excited to sleep because…

Today is YarnBox Sock Box reveal day!!!

Last July YarnBox approached me about being one of their monthly featured dyers! Ummm, YES PLEASE! YarnBox is this really great concept, it’s basically a yarn of the month club, which is just the coolest thing. Every month the subscribers get surprised by a new box featuring an Indie Dyer just like me! What a great way to find new dyers to love. I’ve found some of my favourites this way, and am always inspired by what I see in the boxes! And not only is March Yarn Enabler Wool…I also designed the sock pattern that is included this month! It’s kinda awesome, if I do say so myself!

But let me tell you this – dyeing 1000 skeins of wool was hard work. I don’t just dye skeins of wool, because that would be easy and I don’t do anything the easy way! I did gradients, which involves first knitting the skein into a “blank”; which is basically a big long tube.

I had loads of help knitting the blanks. My husband, the best man ever, not only mechanized my knitting machine to make it go fast fast fast, but he spent his evenings knitting at the kitchen table!

Once I had my greedy little hands on the blanks, I would soak them in big tupperware bins with my pre-dye solution. I went through so much vinegar, i think my hands got pickled, lol!

Meet “water”, for the blues lover

Water was dyed by using turkey basters in Mason Jars, with the blank laying flat on my very super special custom dyeing surface (ok, ya, it’s a bin lid. but it’s perfect! haha!)

Tornado, Sunset, and Paradise were all dip dyed, which involves literally dipping the blank into the dye. i use small clear plastic bins all lined up in a row to do that.

I tackled the 1000 blanks one colourway at a time, so at least my hands would stay the same colours for a few weeks, lol! … Just kidding, i did finally give in and wear gloves. i was getting way more than my average weird looks! (this was my hands after doing sunset. sunset was not my favourite for a while, lol!)

And because I was doing the sock box, I dyed each blank so that the ends were mirror images of each other, so the knitter has the choice to knit one, or two-at-a-time socks! Ya that’s right, I’ve got your back😉

I did four colourways,and I still have my favourite. I tried hard to make each one different so there’d be something for everything…i know my love of big bold colours isn’t universal, haha! (what’s wrong with you people?!)

Dyeing 1000 skeins doesn’t take up a lot of room though….DRYING 1000 skeins in the middle of a Canadian Winter sure did! Each batch took about 3-4 days to dry completely, so I was really stuck with how fast I could actually dye them!

Once these beauties were finally dried, then came the winding! You can only unknit from one end of the blank, so I did the hard work for you! Well, me, my husband and my kids, and my friends, and my friends husbands…it was a group effort, lol! TheCozyKnitter brought home more than a few boxes of blanks to wind! Her husband is a baseball pitcher, and we made sure to put that pitching arm to work at the winding machine, haha!

and then…came the most exciting day! SHIPPING DAY!! 1000 skeins of wool are heavy. and took up a lot of boxes. The poor Purolator man laughed so hard when he found out if was all wool! It was all I could do not to ask to take a selfie with him. Turns out, even I have lines I won’t cross, haha! Although I did take one of the truck :p

so excited, you guys are going to love this. I was lucky enough to get to work with two of my best friends, and together we created this kit for you! There may, or may not, have been bottle(s) of wine consumed while we picked out fabric, ha! Girls nights are the best😉.

Check it out, we are mailing them out this week, lots of time to give to your favourite knitter!!

I’m so excited by these new colourways I decided they needed a blog post all to themselves! I’ve been spending loads of time brainstorming, and then…boom, it hits me all at once. This year’s Holiday Colourways are Nutcracker Themed!

Im releasing my Holiday colourways November 1st…5 more sleeps!

There will be

-Nutcracker stripes

-Sugar Plum Fairy (on Sparkle Sock) stripes

-Snowflakes variegated

-Rat King stripes

-Claire variegated

…and between you and me, there is a Christmas Pencil Colourway😉. Perfect for teacher’s Christmas presents!

its so hard to believe, but my innaugural year of being an Indie Dyer is coming to a close! It’s been a very exciting year for me, from my first skein, to my first sale, to learning how to do stripes, to creating the infamous No 2. Pencil socks! The ups and downs have been numerous, but what I’ve enjoyed the most is meeting knitters from around the world. We are a lovely bunch of coconuts if I do say so myself!

Some of the most memorable things this past year have been a wee incident where wool caught fire in my dyeing microwave…that smell is unforgettable, haha! Another time I shattered a full jug of pencil yellow all over my kitchen floors! Oh, and I’ll never forget when the black seeds of wattermelon just wouldn’t bloody set and I ended up boiling the pot dry and melting plastic and burning wool all in my steamer (joy joy). I’ve sent wool as far away as Australia, and had customers pick it up at my house. I’ve gone through ink cartridges on my printer like you wouldn’t believe, two logos and countless pieces of paper. I’ve navigated government forms, created tax forms and found better wool and dye suppliers. You know you hit the big time when you’re buying dye powder by the pound!

Im thick in the midst of a big dye order of No 2 Pencils and Not your Mothers Sock Monkey stripes, which is keeping my dye pots humming and my hands interesting shades of yellow, black and red! With all the kids home for summer vacation I’ve been having to learn the fine art of juggling dyeing and mother-ing, which some days is a job for coffee, other days alcohol!

To to celebrate my big milestone, I want to hear what you guys would like! Would you like a sale? Free shipping? BOGO? Or maybe you’d like a huuuuuge giveaway for one lucky (4randomly selected) winner!

Well almost. Tomorrow is the last school day for my two oldest, which means no more packing lunches for two glorious months!!! I am embarrassingly excited about that! I just hate packing lunches. And by June…they are lucky it’s not just croutons in tin foil!

I’ve been super busy, went on field trips with both my big kids, which was super special since I haven’t been on one since my youngest was born. It’s fascinating to see your kids interacting with their peers. The dynamics they develop blows my mind! I’ve also been frantically trying to finish that shawl for my daughters teacher, and I’m down to the 11th hour here…ok, maybe even 11:30…if I don’t get it finished by lunch, no way will this bad boy dry/block in time to be packed up to gift tomorrow! Ah! Wish me luck!

I’m done the body chart, just have to do the edging chart…

On top of all that, I’ve been mad dyeing to finish up the orders from my anniversary sale, those packages will start shipping today, I hope to have them all out by Friday.

I’ve been retaking a lot of my colourways’ glamour shots too, I’ve changed the look of how I want my etsy shop to look, which has been a lot of fun!

I also transposed my ‘greetings Earthlings’ colourway into self-striping socks!!

Love these

In super cool exciting news, Lovesockwool has included her monkey socks in her podcast and my cheeks are rosy with joy! If you’ve never watched one of her podcasts run, don’t walk, to Lovesockwool’s YouTube check her out! My socks….I mean her socks…are at about 10:20🙂

Well, shawl knitting waits for no woman, so I had been get on with it! Have a great week!

Good morning lovelies!! I cannot believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted here! I’ve been a blog slacker and I’m terribly embarrassed! Life has been moving along at rocket speed…I swear I blink and I miss a day. How did that happen!

This spring I had busy weekends juggling being a dance mom as well as being the convenor for my sons lacrosse league. If having kids didn’t kill my dream of lazy mornings in bed, then dance competitions and lacrosse certainly did! During the week I have been elbow deep dyeing up a storm, I’m forever thrilled and grateful you all like me, you really like me!! …errrr, I mean my wools. You like my wools :p. I have so many ideas kicking around in my wee noggin, just gotta throw the dye on some wool!

May’s big hits were of course Charlotte…she was a gorgeous girl :)

Not to be outdone by monkeys though…these bad boys have been flying out of the dye pots!

Don’t tell…but I am actually almost finished my second sock! My hubby, for the first time ever, actually requested a pair of socks in this colourway, so I’ve been knitting on them whenever I could. I’m at the last stripe sequence on the second (can you believe it! Take that SSS!) and then just have to throw in the afterthought heels. Woot woot!

I also introduced some new colourways, my fav being ‘Greetings Earthlings’ ( the name! So fun!) on top here, as well as ‘sea glass’ which is just so beautiful. Let’s not forget old faithful pencils too. Always a crowd pleaser!

I am knitting my daughter’s amazing (and also a redhead, I am genetically programmed to love her!) teacher a ‘Papaya’ shawl in Seaglass and its spectacular. It’s going to be hard to give away!

I also have huge news I can’t completely share…but a knit wear designer and author (as in real books!) has asked me to contribute some colourways to her newest book. I dies!!!!! It’s like a dream come true!! This unnamed (but big name! Oh I can’t wait to tell you!) was looking for a selection of ombre Blues. This is what I came up with…

I’m really happy with them! I played with the blues for a long time, I wanted the perfect dusty blue undertone. Not a bright blue, or a black blue…blues can be so intricate!

Of course during all this our laptop decided to stop accepting the charging cord and promptly died, so it’s been in the shop for a week now getting a new plug thingie and a general clean up. Three kids and a wild puppy I guess can do a number on it😉. I, of course, never drop the damn thing and never download viruses😉. Hehe

I made it! Despite spending the weekend at a dance competition in Hamilton with my girl, she and I made a quick trip to the frolic to gorge ourselves on the yarn fumes. I’m raising her right😉. ….although all the attention she got because of her medal and stage makeup sure helped her love of wool festivals! Haha!

She also scored some new sock wool, I looooove turtlepurl yarns self-stripping socks. Just glorious

This one’s called city girl

Somehow, and I still have no freaking clue how, my girl convinced me her American girl doll needed a hand knit sweater…made out of merino and silk!

…I don’t even have a merino/silk sweater! Best dressed doll in Canada

Also scored some beautiful silk/merino for myself. A new-to-me indie dyer as well, raventwist. Because I was damned if the doll would get more wool than me!

You guys have snapped up all the ones I’ve made and I’m busy dyeing more every day! Ya’ll bought so much I had to order more wool, lol! My hubby fell in love with it too, I actually finished his first dock and am on to his second! SSS has hit though, I’m having problems staying motivated…like usual!

I’m still working on my watermelon shawl (not surprised…) and an alpaca cowl which is pretty much going to hibernate until fall now that I’m back in maxi dresses!

Of course, i smiled seeing the wool on the swift too, so i’m an easy mark, lol!

I dyed the skein off a knit blank, which makes the wool interestingly kinky when you frog it. I could have just knit straight from the blank but…well…

hello beautiful xoxo

I have no pattern in mind yet, i’m thinking of doing some form of modified Cladonia because that pattern is to die for. I knit one two years ago as a end-of-year teacher’s present and she still whispers sweet nothings in my dreams. But we’ll see how this develops! I’m loving the white speckled look to the pink, it looks like a real watermelon!

Did you see that this week i was featured on The Cozy Knitter‘s blog?! How cool is that!

hello hello on this dreary thursday! Not sure about where you guys live, but Spring in these parts this year still seems like a distant fantasy. It is literally snowing right now. Im ready for my flip flops!

But I digress.

Ive got some cool stuff to show ya’ll and some shop business to talk about. First off, the wooly goodness. I am so excited to share that I’ve found a new wholesale wool supplier that is actually Canadian! This is excellent news for me, since it solves a problem I was pretty stressed about. The Canadian dollar is in the pits, the lowest it’s been in…well…before I can remember. and my previous supplier was American. So you can imagine ordering wool was a punch in the gut as it got more and more expensive every time. It was at the point I was afraid Id have to raise my prices. BUT I don’t! YAY!! I can now get wool at great canadian prices, and best of all…i can drive to pick it up, so i save huge on shipping. which means you save! …or rather don’t pay more, lol, sorry ;P

There is a little bit of difference…. My new wool is a 80/20 mix, as opposed to my old 75/25, and it has a much tighter spin. It’s still squishy soft and lovely, I’m quite in love with it! You (darling, lovely, awesome) returning customers might notice a difference in the look though. Wanna see?

Here’s my old wool…

and here’s my new wool…

the twist is a bit more pronounced, but the squish factor is just the same :) And the best part…prices stay the same!

But let’s talk prices for a second. Shipping prices that is. I try very very hard to enabler every single one of you! It’s kinda what i live for ;) SOooo to have high shipping costs is killing me. This is why Im going to introduce standard packet shipping as my new “standard” shipping. This means no tracking number, but it is half the price. I will add an option to upgrade shipping to the tracked packet, because i know there are stalkers out there who just looooove watching their wool make their way to them! (I might spend an illogical amount of time stalking pkgs too ;) It’s ok, you’re amongst friends here). Best of both worlds I hope!

In other (big big BIG) shop news….As of this friday, Im changing from a Dyed-to-Order format, to a weekly stocking format! I’m really really excited. I will include a few custom slots each week just in case you are really needing something specific and I didn’t dye it that day. I got you covered, don’t worry. I’m really excited about this because it means I can introduce new colourways each week! Keep things fresh, and new and everyone is happy! And the best part is…it means a shorter turn around time between when you order and when it goes out the door! Im going to cut the time down from 2 weeks to under 1! YAY!! Mark your calendars enabled ones…

Thursday April 2 at 12pm EST will be my first stocking event!

Also starting next week, I’m going to debut my new monthly club…Pencil CRAYONS! Each month I will be doing one colour of pencil crayons, so you can fill your #operationsockdrawer with coloured goodness! The club will have a one month, three month or 6 month option, and you will get free shipping with the 6 month option :) I can’t wait to see everyone’s socks! I will announce the first Month’s colour Next Thursday.

I think that’s all for today guys! I will leave you with this picture, because im mean and you love me!